Trabzon A Third and Final Time

I didn't do much while I was there. Toured around Trabzon a bit more (but since it was my third time, there was not much left for me to see!). I enjoyed relaxing and also did some work for Dr. Beardsley. There were a few highlights from my trip to Trabzon, however.

1. On the first night I came to Trabzon, I decided to surprise Husniye by making dinner for her. I went to the market and got a fresh fish. (I think I got alabalik, which is a local fish found in some of the lakes around here). It's kind of like a grouper and is quite tasty. I prepared it by seasoning it with pepper, lemon, and butter. While this is a pretty normal and simple seasoning, it was more of a traditional American way to prepare the dish instead of a Turkish one. She hadn't had anything like it before and really liked it, which made me happy. We also had macaroni and cheese with it, which was also another first for Husniye. Now I send her boxes of it occasionally because you can't get it in Turkey.

2. Speaking of food. Husniye and her friend Bahar also taught me how to cook a couple of Turkish dishes. The first, karniyarik (I think that's how it is spelled), is an eggplant and meat dish with a tomato sauce. I tried to make it in the US afterwards once but it fell apart when I tried to pick it up and only mildly resembled the Turkish original. Oh well. It still tasted pretty good. I also learned how to make kisir, a traditional dish with bulgar and other kinds of vegetables. I have not attempted to make this one in the US yet. I didn't like kisir as much as I liked some other things in Turkey. Husniye also taught me how to make pilav (rice) the Turkish way. It involves mixing in a lot of butter and cooking the rice grains before they absorb the water. This method of cooking makes the rice more buttery and creamy tasting (quite yummy). I tried to make this one in the US but it wasn't quite as good as it was in Turkey. I am not sure if the differences in taste are because I did something wrong or because the ingredients here are just not the same.

3. Going for walks: In the evening, we would sometimes go for walks along the Black Sea. I would meet her after work and we would walk there. We also walked on the main street in Trabzon that had all of the shops (Uzun Sokak).

4. Drinking tea on Boztepe. There is a tea garden at the highest point in Trabzon that overlooks the Black Sea. We went there a couple of times and I loved it every time (I described it in a previous blog post and you can read about it there).

5. Movies and Bowling: We went bowling. The bowling alley was just like in the US, except more expensive. We also saw the Harry Potter move (number 5) in English with Turkish subtitles. Husniye didn't like it...and now I think Harry Potter has been ruined for her even though it was the worst of the 5 movies. We went to a local movie place that had English movies with turkish subtitles. I wanted to get Austin Powers for her to watch. Sadly, they did not have it...but I wish they had!

5a. We also tried to play tennis one night on some local tennis courts.

6. We went to the nicest restaurant in Trabzon for dinner one night. I took her out to dinner. Their specialty plate was a fish dish with cheese on top. It sounds weird, but it was absolutely delicious. It was a 3 course meal and it was fantastic. Best part of all is that the nicest restaurant cost only about 50 TL for two people.





7. Talking to Tiffany on skype randomly at 4am because we couldn't sleep.

8. Learning more Turkish (most of which I have now forgotten unfortunately).

Otherwise we just spent time together and enjoyed each other's company. It was nice to settle down after all of that traveling and it was a nice way to spend my last two weeks in Trabzon. On one of our weekends we went to Yusufeli, which was its own adventure (see next post). I hope to visit the Black Sea region again sometime soon. It was a beautiful place and I liked it a lot!

Day 17: Cappadocia (July 16)

This would be my third and final day in Cappadocia. I probably could have done more on this day, but I decided not to. The truth of the matter is that I had been traveling for 17 days straight without much rest. I was exhausted and frankly tired of traveling (I never in my life thought I would ever be tired of traveling). After 17 days of it though, it is definitely possible.

At any rate, the plan for the day (my last in Cappadocia) was to hike the Pigeon Valley to Uchisar (I figured the hikes would be as awesome as the first day). Basically, nothing remarkable happened. I started hiking and made it about a third of the way through the valley. The trail was not well-marked and I eventually got to a point where I could not go further. I had lost the trail and could not find my way. I also twisted my ankle or did something. It was sore and painful to walk. I decided to turn around and walk back to Goreme before I got lost. I went back to the hostel. I stayed in the hostel for the rest of the afternoon until it was time for my overnight bus to Trabzon. I was tired of traveling and enjoyed hanging out with the Turks who worked in the hotel. I had quite a few fun games of backgammon! :)

i still managed to get some cool pics of the short hike I did take in the two hours I did hike.







I rode the bus overnight. It sucked as usual but after a 12 hour trip I had gone from central Turkey to the beautiful Black Sea region once again to meet Husniye. I would be staying with her for almost 2 weeks, spending my remaining days in Turkey with her.

Day 16: Cappadocia (July 15)

Today was the day of the tour. I was going to get up very early (around 8am) and I was excited. It cost 50 TL, which was reasonable for an all day guided tour that included lunch. My Canadian friends decided not to come because the one girl was still sick. This turned out to not be a very good trip for them. I feel bad for them to have come all this way for such a short amount of time and not being able to enjoy it.

I went alone on the tour. It was in a minivan which would carry us to our various destinations throughout the day. Our first stop was up the ridge from Göreme to get a good view of the area. Here's what it looked like.



She told us a little about the area, how it was settled by Christians and all of that good stuff. Then we got back to the car and drove towards Derinkuyu. After a 45 minute drive or so, we arrived. Derinkuyu was one of several underground cities built in this region. This particular city was built either in the 8th or 7th century BC by the Phyrgians (though they aren't really sure). The underground city was also used by the Christians to take refuge from Romans persecuting Christians. The city itself was large, 11 levels. It went 85 meters deep (the passageways were very very narrow though). It could hold several thousand people and could even store livestock. The city had everything needed for a city including cellars and storage rooms, etc. They even had a room for religious studies.

It was an amazing place to walk around - to imagine how people would have lived here in hiding for years. It was also amazing to me to think how they built something like this without today's technology. There were no bulldozers, tractors, cranes, etc to build this 11 story underground city. It was all done by hand.









One memory I wont forget is trying to climb down and back up the 55 meter staircase. It was so steep and narrow. There were several times that I thought I wouldn't make it out of there. It was actually built this way for defense purposes. No more than one person could ever enter the stairwell at a time, so if they were ever attacked, they could pick off the attackers one at a time as they tried to enter the lower levels of the underground city.

After we had left the underground city, it had started to rain. It was only about 8C outside. i didn't know it was going to be that cold. The tour guide told us that she had never seen it rain in Cappadocia in July in all of the years that she's lived here. She was just as surprised as we were.

We then took the bus to a volcano lake. Although it was no longer geologically active, the lake water is undrinkable and no living things live in it. There are still poisonous gasses bubbling up from beneath the earth's surface. The gases also make the water a slightly different color, but it was hard to see the difference because the weather was so bad. The clouds were rolling over the volcano lake. I braved the rain to get a picture.




On the bus, I started talking to these two British guys sitting next to me. They were touring around Turkey and we were swapping stories. They had already been to Van and some other portions of Eastern Turkey. Originally, they had wanted to go to Iran and tour there. They had come all the way out to the border with Eastern Turkey when their visa got denied. This was when all of the journalism stuff was going on in Iran and the "Green Revolution," which wasn't really a revolution at all, was occurring. Iran didn't want any more westerners in their country for any reason that summer. So these guys had to change their plans and here they were. I was jealous that they even had the chance to go to Iran. As an American, they wouldn't have let me in regardless of whether there were political uprisings. There was some other guy I talked to on the bus for a little while that was an American. I can't remember his name or what he did (I should really write these things down on my trips) but he was a nice guy.

The bus made it to our next stop, the Ilhara Valley. The Ilhara Valley is a 10 mile gorge cut out of volcanic rock by the Menderez River. The reason it is so famous (in addition to its beauty) is that it has numerous hiding places and entrances to Byzantine churches built to hide from the Romans and access points to underground cities. We, as a bus, had to decide whether we wanted to do the 3km hike through the valley. It was lightly raining and once we decided to do it, we could not turn around. The bus would leave the starting point and pick us up at the end. We decided to make the hike anyway (the rain was not that bad).

Here are some pictures from the hike (and we went inside one of the churches too).













After the hike we stopped for lunch, which was pretty unremarkable. Then we arrived at the Selime Monastery.

The monastery is the biggest rock-cut monastery of Cappadocia with a cathedral sized church. Selime monastery was carved by the monks in the 13th century and apart from the church has monks quarters, a large kitchen, and stables for animals. The walls were once decorated with frescoes of which very little remains. The inside was pretty cool to see and the view was great. Our tour guide told us some other cool stuff about it but I can't remember exactly what she said!











After the monastery, we rode back towards Goreme. On the way back we passed Mt. Hasan and Mt. Melendez, which were the two largest mountains in the region. In fact, they were even snow covered in July!

Our last stop brought us to overlook Pigeon Valley (Güvercin Valley). This valley was the gorge that connected Goreme to Uchisar. The pictures should reveal why it is called Pigeon valley!







Also at the Pigeon Valley was the inevitable jewelry shop. They took us for a tour of the jewelry store and at the end was of course jewelry that if bought would be a commission for the tour guide. I didn't buy any, obviously. All in all the tour was great and i was really glad I took it.

That night it was raining more (surprising for the region) and I went to a local kebab restaurant. The local kebab here in Cappadocia is known as a Pottery Kebab. The weird thing about it is that it is actually served in a piece of pottery (I think cooked in it too) and the piece of pottery is actually broken upon serving it. I am not sure if this is just for show or if they ruin a piece of pottery every time it is made! It was tender and good. I really enjoyed the meal. I then went back to my room and hung out a little while before going to sleep.



Sharing my room with me was an interesting couple from New Mexico. They had lost their jobs in the bad economy and instead of living in the US, they travelled to poorer third world countries and were seeing the world and using their money on that. They explained to me that traveling around the world was actually less expensive than living in the US because the cost of living was so much cheaper. They had bought one of those around the world air fares and had been going to places like Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey, etc. They told me that Thailand was the only place they had been to that was better than Turkey. One day I hope to find out if they are right. They were certainly an interesting couple to say the least. Soon after chatting with them for a little while about their life and what they were doing, I went to sleep.

Day 15: Cappadocia (July 14)

I saved what would become one of my favorite destinations in Turkey for last. I knew before I went that it would be a highlight of the trip. In fact, I heard this from just about every exchange student who made this trip back in mid-February.

For the entire time I was in Turkey (ever since late February) I had a chip on my shoulder about getting to Cappadocia. One of the Turkish students, Mert, had planned a trip for a set number of exchange students to go to Cappadocia together. He arranged the busses, hotels, activities, etc. I can't remember how much it was, but it was definitely more than it should have been. He was almost certainly making money on this little arrangement. Even still, for a weekend trip, it was quite cheap to us foreigners. I had originally planned to go on the trip, myself. I signed up and was going to pay him the money. Unfortunately, the only place he was willing to collect the money was in the Superdorm. Truthfully, it made sense because thats where 95% of the exchange students lived. He said that he would be there at 8pm to collect money. I guess for whatever reason I messed up the time and I thought he meant 9pm. I was there for 30 minutes, money in hand, ready to pay him. He was not. When another person told me he had already been by, I raced back to my room and emailed him. He received the email no later than 9:35. I told him of my mistake and that I would be willing to meet him anywhere right now to get him the money in time because I really wanted to go on the trip. He told me that I missed my opportunity and that I would be put on the bottom of the waiting list (giving me no hope to get a seat on the trip). He was actually a real douchebag about the whole thing. The reason I was really upset was not just because I was missing the trip, but because I lived in another place, away from the exchange students. They live in the same dorm, see each other every night, hang out, plan outings and trips together. I felt that this trip to Cappadocia would have been an opportunity for me to meet some of the American and European students who were traveling so that I would be invited and involved in potential weekend trips. It is no fun to travel alone (and not always very safe either). At any rate, I missed out on the chance to go. Upon the return from the trip, I heard from several exchange students about how great Cappadocia was and how I needed to go see it. For these reasons, it was one of the places I REALLY wanted to visit during my time there.

I took another overnight bus trip from Antalya to Nevşehir. The bus cost about 60 TL (as expected for an overnight bus). The bus ride was approximately 12 hours. My feelings about the overnight busses were mixed. I took several of them on this trip. On one hand, it saved me the cost of a room for a night, but on the other hand, they were usually uncomfortable and I got little sleep (it's kind of like trying to sleep on an airplane). Even though it wasn't really that far, the roads were difficult because the path weaved through the mountains of the southern Mediterranean and up towards the center of the country. By the next morning, I was at a bus stop outside of Nevşehir waiting for the bus company shuttle to take me to Göreme, where I would be staying for the next three days (and the heart of Cappadocia).

While waiting for the shuttle to Göreme, I recognized the two Canadian girls that I had previously stayed with in Olympos. We had talked about potentially being in Cappadocia at the same time and that if we were it would be fun to see it together. I was glad to see them, as I had been traveling alone since I had seen them in Olympos a few days prior. While I had been traveling, they stayed in Olympos and relaxed in the hammocks, swam, and enjoyed the ridiculously good deals of staying in the air-conditioned treehouses (which were actually a lot more comfortable than they sounded). I had not made plans as to which pansiyon I would stay in. They had and I just followed them.

The ride into Göreme was magnificent. I could instantly see why everyone wanted to visit this place in Turkey. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. This is what I saw on the way in:





These rock structures are called "fairy chimneys." Basically, they are tall, thin spires of rock that protrude from the ground in a dry place. The sediment had been piled on for years, hardening, and creating new layers. These things were all over the place. It was a beautiful sight to see.

We made our way to the pension. I was ready to go sightseeing after a little nap. The Canadian girls had a different plan, it seemed. One of them had gotten sick in Olympos (I had heard that people who stay there for a while end up getting sick but it was unclear whether it was staying in close proximity to a lot of other people or if it was because the fresh water creek that emptied into the ocean near where a lot of people swam had some sewage and other disgusting things that one would not want to swim in). At any rate, rather than rent the cheap, dorm style rooms, the girls opted for a slightly more expensive private room. We had hoped that the sick girl would feel better by the next day and made plans to take a tour. Now I had been using my lonely planet guide and had specifically not taken tours because I kind of wanted to do it myself on my own schedule (and my own budget). However, Cappadocia was a HUGE place, and there is no way I would even get to see a fraction of what I wanted to see unless I took the tour. So I booked the tour with the girls for the next day.

The room I was staying in was interesting. It was a part of one of the fairy chimneys. It had been hollowed out and it was slightly underground. This created a kind of natural air conditioner, keeping things cool. This was necessary, as I was in the middle of a high plateau (that gets very hot) in the middle of the summer. The accommodations were also quite reasonable. (Only something like 8TL per night), the cheapest I had seen yet! It was so cheap that I didn't even try to negotiate (It likely wouldn't have done much good anyway).

I took a nap and then asked the concierge about the open air museum. He told me that it was about 1.5km (1 mile) or so down the road and that I could walk if I wanted (which was just fine with me). He also gave me a map of the area and told me which areas he would suggest hiking (I wanted to go for a hike after the open air museum). So armed with the map he gave me of some cool hiking trails and the direction to the open air museum, I was off.

Here's the road I followed:



The Open Air Museum

The Open Air Museum was really neat. Persecuted Christians lived here inside the fairy chimneys and painted frescoes on the walls and the ceilings. These have been preserved for over a thousand years. There were several churches (perhaps they did not all function as churches but they all had frescoes depicting christian scenes on them). Once inside, you could wander from one room to the next, seeing the history. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the Open Air Museum.












There are several more pictures from the open air museum (see the link on the right of this page).

After I finished walking around the Open Air Museum (it took a couple of hours), I decided to go hiking in the area around Göreme. The area itself is famous for its hikes and a big reason why many backpackers choose this particular town when they come to Cappadocia.

The Open Air Museum is nearest to the Valley of the Swords, so that's where I decided to go first. The map was unclear exactly where I was supposed to go to get in, so I hiked up the large hill next to the Open Air Museum to see if there was an entrance way up there.




Near the sign, there was a gravel path to the right which lead down into the valley. I figured this was my best option for getting into the Valley of Swords. I hiked down the hill for a few minutes into the rocky area. The trail had definitely been trodden before but there were tall grasses on either side. The rock formations were stunning. In hindsight, the ensuing hike was probably not something I should have done alone in a foreign country, but I did it anyway.

I saw instantly why they called it the valley of swords.




This is what the trail looked like.



I hiked on it for a little while. I went in between rocks. Amazingly, on the cliffs on each side, you could see evidence of people who lived here in quite a few of the rocks (even the ones further away from the open air museum). It seems this whole area was used as a natural shelter from enemies. Lots of them have random doorways carved out of them. After a little while, I got to a cliff on the trail. The drop was probably a good 15-25 feet. I probably could have climbed down and continued on the trail (which likely would have connected up with one of the others I was going to walk on), but I didn't think it would be a good idea to try (especially being alone without a cell phone). If I were to fall, it might have been days before someone would have found me.

Rather than go on, I turned around and came back the way I had come originally. I found the main road and walked back towards Goreme on it until I saw a dirt path on flat ground going in the direction I had just come from (to the right). It would lead me to another trail .

I began walking towards and inside the Rose Valley. It was a much more open trail than the Valley of Swords. The fairy chimneys were further apart.







After walking a ways, the pathway opened up. I ran into some other hikers and they told me that one of the fairy chimneys was open and you could go inside. I went inside and found that it was in the same style as the ones in the open air museum. Pretty cool.







From this place, I hiked up the side of some rocks to another church and went inside there. The view from the higher ground was amazing.







I hiked some more and found another random church. Now I was much higher in elevation from where I started the hike. Right about when I got to the church, it started drizzling and a rainshower passed by. I waited it out in another place next to the church. An older Turkish man was there. He obviously made money by selling drinks and snacks to tourists who hike out there. He showed me some of his art work and allowed me to wait out the rainstorm with him. He was a friendly guy.

It was so strange to be raining in July there. I hadn't come prepared for it. I also found out later from both the people in my hostel and my tour guide that they had NEVER in their entire lives seen rain in Cappadocia in July. It was the weirdest thing. I was hot and it was hot outside, so it was refreshing...but very very odd. (I guess I attract this kind of odd weather because it also rained the first time I went to a desert in Israel).

Here are some more pictures from the hike.







After hiking for a couple of hours, it was time to turn around and go home. I hiked back towards where I came from and thought I went to the right place. I tried to go a slightly different way than I came so that I could see new things and I thought it would be a little quicker. Much to my dismay I got turned around and got lost. By the time I found the road (I ended up walking up the hill where the Goreme sign was and ended up about an extra quarter to half a mile further from the town than I thought I would be, I was exausted. I found the road and began walking towards town. Luckily, an American couple had rented a car and they were lost. They asked me for directions, which I was able to provide. They offered to give me a ride back to town, which was awesome of them. So I basically ended up hiking for about 5 solid hours after walking to the open air museum. The hike was amazing and was definitely a highlight of my trip (see more pictures on the Cappadocia link on the right).

I went to a quick restaurant when I got back to town and went to bed. I had to get up early and I was completely exhausted from the day's hike.